When you look back at your life and see how much tech news you absorb through these,
do you think you'll have any regrets? Because now's the time to do something about it.
Okay, we're doing it. Google is wisely rebranding both its Bard Chatbot and Duet AI for Workspace as Gemini,
the name of the language model most strongly remembered for its heinously deceptive demo.
Good choice. But the tech giant says you shouldn't be surprised if Gemini still refers to itself as
Bard for a while, presumably because it's inherited its creator's proclivity for bulls***.
It's also Sydney on weekends. But the new Gemini Advanced, a paid tier powered by the flagship Gemini Ultra 1.0 model,
might do a bit better. Early impressions seem to broadly agree that Gemini is indeed a chatbot,
but one that is noticeably worse than GPT-4.
YouTuber AI Explained found out the jail breaks cited as one reason for Gemini's delayed rollout
still work, although fellow creator Fireship thought Gemini was better at Bukowski-inspired
poetry. So I don't know, maybe it's just a more artsy chatbot.
Maybe you just need to kind of like get down on its level a little bit.
I'm not like other bots. Gemini Advanced can be accessed through the new Google One AI Premium subscription
for 20 bucks a month, the same price as ChatGPT+, but at least Google's plan also gives you the
standard Google One benefits and Gemini integration into Gmail and Drive.
But the most interesting part of this story might be that Gemini can replace Google Assistant on
Android with a pop-up overlay that can read what's on your screen and connect to Google's other
services. If you have the new app, which is only available in the US right now, not here in Canada,
even worse, Americans can install two Gemini apps, since the chatbot's also available in the
regular Assistant app. There's not many of us up here, Google, just ship the extras.
That's all right, we got Timbies, that's good enough. The Timbits are always there.
Sony, the parent company of anime streaming platforms, Funimation and Crunchyroll,
and a few other companies, I guess, is merging those two services together, and in so doing,
deleting digital copies of content users purchased from Funimation.
The move follows multiple instances of Sony removing content that users had
purchased from the PlayStation Store, like a kid sneaking the Brussels sprouts his mom just bought
into the garbage. Now, some of the codes for these digital copies were included with physical
Blu-rays or DVDs of anime dubbed and released by Funimation, so customers may still have access
to their content if they didn't lose the disks. But Funimation had promised access to customers
digital copies forever. And if I thought that was true, why would I keep the disks instead of
using them as eyes for my Halloween robot costume? Think Sony or Frisbees. To add insult to injury,
the new service formed by Funimation and Crunchyroll's merger, called Crunchyroll,
is getting a $20 price hike to $100 per year. For what? The privilege of having Sony steal
my vegetables? Or am I going to get my nutrients? Instagram and Meta's Twitter competitor Threads
will no longer proactively recommend political content, because toxic social media discourse
should be centered around which AI-generated influencer is hotter, or more importantly,
which of their fake dogs is cuter. The two platforms are following in the footsteps of Facebook,
which had already minimized the prevalence of political content in its newsfeed and reels.
If you still somehow manage to stumble onto a politics-related Instagram or Threads account,
you can follow it and see the divisive partisan tripe it posts in your feed if you're some kind
of masochistic sicko. And creators who specialize in said tripe and are concerned with the new rules
maybe affecting their engagement can check whether that's happening under account status in their
profile settings. Threads and Instagram boss Adam Massari said back when the Twitter-like
first launched that the platform would specifically not prioritize news content,
so this isn't coming completely out of left field. But I can't help but wonder if the solution to
social media's measurably negative effect on mental health is something other than sealing
your platform off into an even tighter bubble. It's gonna burst. And then all of the moms and
aunts are gonna shoot out.
I was wondering what a quick bit was? It's me. It's me.
Cablemod issued a voluntary recall of its angled adapters for NVIDIA graphics cards back in December,
but now the US Consumer Product Safety Commission has made it official. It turns out that the
male connector can become loose and overheat, resulting in melting and potentially fire.
Note that while all angled adapters are affected, angled cables are fine. Stick them wherever you
like champ. Okay. The failure rate of these cables is only estimated to be 1.07%, but they've also
caused around $75,000 in damage so far. They're NVIDIA graphics cards and they're on fire.
It adds up fast. The FCC has officially deemed unsolicited robocalls using AI-generated voices
illegal under existing law, specifically the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
The decision means that the FCC will now be able to fine anyone who tries to contact you
about your car's extended warranty in the sultry tones of Frank Sinatra. And that sucks.
This will also give attorneys general additional options to prosecute telemarketers that violate
these regulations, as well as scammers that pretend to be your recently kidnapped grandson who
desperately needs you to buy him $3,000 and best buy gift cards. Although that could be real or
not. I mean, you don't... You know what's real if he's asking for Reebucks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
is seeking up to $7 trillion in investment to increase the world's chip building capacity and
solve AI chip scarcity. Sounds like the marketing pitch for this. A real steal for just 13 times
last year's global chip sales. Altman is talking to the governments of the US and the United Arab
Emirates, as well as industry partners, to try and achieve the princely sum. In more humble news,
NVIDIA has created a new business unit to tackle the $30 billion custom AI chip market,
also known as the only AI chip market NVIDIA hasn't cornered yet. I'm sure things will change
when Sam Altman raises enough money to buy Apple twice. And he'll be able to give vision pros to
all the children. It'll scan their eyeballs and give them crypto. Brilliant Labs, a tech startup
from formal Apple executive Bobak Tavengar, that's what we're going with, has launched Frame,
open source smart glasses that pair with their AI-powered NOAA app. While the spectacles can
answer many questions, based on their design, most users will simply ask for the location of
the nearest craft brewery, or for the date of the next Decemberists concert. Included with the
glasses is something called Mr. Power, which is actually a mobile charger and not, as I had assumed,
the name of mail enhancement pills you could buy at a gas station. And we've gotten a teaser of
what Lenovo has in store for the Mobile World Congress this year, an invisible laptop. Well,
I mean, not invisible, just see-through. So depending on what you're watching, you can really
horrify everybody else at the coffee shop. The display is fully transparent, with no visible
bezel to speak of, so you can really appreciate the handprints on both the front and the back of
your screen. Don't worry about making eye contact with anybody through the display, though, because
you'll just be too busy trying to find the stupid non-corporeal buttons on its stupid glass touch
keyboard. And so are you. So bring your fully corporeal self back on Monday for some more tech news.